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I always performed as a kid to make my family laugh and was more concerned with making kids at school laugh than I was about the lessons.

Honestly, I was a good kid but I figured out pretty early that I had a gift for making people laugh. I wanted to entertain and when that happens you tend to get yourself in trouble in class.

I enjoyed entertaining people since I was a little girl. There was nothing better than making people laugh. That, and the need to express myself in a safe environment.

I made a supreme effort not to do that thing that parents do, which is to bore people without children to death by going on and on about how funny their children are, so there's none of that hopefully.

Is there anything better than making a kid laugh?

I think the kids in school that laughed at the clothes that we wore and the house that we lived in, and then my mother had to cut hair... I think that was a good motivator. Every time they laughed at me, they just built a fire, and there was only one way to put it out - to try and show 'em I was as good as they were.

My kids act all the time and it's exactly what I used to do.

I was never a 'bad' kid, but I did get into minor juvenile trouble. Look, I grew up in Brooklyn. This was the '60s, and the neighborhood was rapidly changing and not without its problems. All the kids of the neighborhood 'did their thing,' breaking windows and the like. I was no different.

I do have an outsider's complex of getting made fun of. I was made fun of as a kid, and I don't have the stomach for it.

Growing up doing those Kiwanis Clubs, doing those Cub Scout banquets, doing those church shows, I learned to find that sensibility that most people could laugh at - that all ages and demographics could laugh at.